Recently in Information Architecture Category

The deadline for proposals for panel participation or presentations for:
Gilbane San Francisco 2008 at the Westin Market Hotel, San Francisco, June 17 - 19, 2008 is January 15.

Visit http://gilbanesf.com/ to see the topic areas we are focusing and then see how to submit a proposal.

If you've never been to one of our events and want see what we have been covering in our conference programs you can view the programs from Gilbane Boston 2007 and Gilbane San Francisco 2007.

If you have additional questions about speaking, send them to speaking@gilbane.com.

Mary and I did the Webinar with Oracle this week. You can see the recorded version and download the associated white paper over at the Oracle site. The focus was on the challenges of multisite management.

Web content management is a staple technology for thousands of enterprises—and for good reason. Every enterprise needs a basic web presence, and organizations of even modest size and complexity have multiple websites. These multiple sites likely span a range of purposes and needs, including supplier and distributor extranets, customer support websites, and corporate and departmental intranets. Every enterprise's needs will vary of course, but the larger the organization, the likelihood that the organization will have multiple websites, spanning a range of internal and external needs.

The abundance of websites results from sound business needs. These needs begin with the obvious requirement to have a web presence, but extend to many other areas. Consider the need to work closely with suppliers, and how that requirement can be met by a content-rich and functional extranet. Human Resources is another likely arena, where the organization might want to provide benefit information through an interactive website. The examples abound, and the recent explosion of blogs and wikis has amplified the need.

A key element in multiple website management is understanding who does what when it comes to website design, content creation, and the day-to-day efforts to keep the site or sites going. Can these users be productive and efficient? The matter of scale is another central question: Are there only one or two sites, or is your enterprise in the position of having dozens or even hundreds of sites, and serving content to intranets, extranets, and portals, with new websites regularly demanded by the needs of the business?

Multiple websites present challenges in many different typical workflows and processes. These include identifying and empowering the IT personnel who need to take the lead in web architecture to the line of business manager who must decide on the content and organization of the site and keep it up to date. Perhaps most significant are the needs of the content contributors. At the end of the day, they need easy-to-use tools that allow them to create content within the policies of the overall enterprise and the specific line of business.

Given the strong demand for multiple websites and the potential costs and inefficiencies of building these out separately, there is a natural need for the right technology. At minimum, organizations need web content management technology that supports centralized strategy and governance and that uses IT resources efficiently; at the same time, the technology must give site managers and contributors the means to create and manage the content quickly and easily.

Although I have been out of the technical writing trenches for some time now, I enjoy staying in touch with my techdoc buddies and keeping up with the hot issues. One I remember well is the challenges in the early 90's of single-sourcing documentation for print, electronic, and context-sensitive online help delivery.

Apparently it's still hot, despite the release of RoboHelp6 from Adobe, a tool I remember quite well. This is the first product update Adobe has released since the company bought Macromedia over a year ago. Product reviewers generally agree that Adobe beat the estimated delivery date by months, although there is some confusion over dueling version numbers according to my friend Char James-Tanny over at helpstuff.com. Still, an early release is a good sign in terms of a company's current and future commitment to a product.

On the other hand, product reviewers also seem to agree that "XML does not seem to be a priority." Hmmm. That certainly does not bode well for champions of single-sourcing for multi-channel publishing (although the new version automates hyperlinked PDF creation.) Even more interesting are the passionate responses to an unfavorable monkeyPi product review, including an extremely detailed rebuttal from Rick Stone, Adobe's Community Expert for the product (although he's not an employee...)

Without claiming to have reviewed the product, what I find most interesting is Adobe's focus on source and version control, team collaboration and workflow, and the usage tracking capabilities of RoboHelp Server6. Adobe describes this latter feature as the ability to identify frequently-viewed content, view usage statistics, and uncover search trends.

As we've discussed in numerous posts, relevant content and customer experience are intrinsically related, whether the project is Web site design, localization efforts, or yes, even online help development. (Part 2 of our series on this subject, Small Content Changes, Big Impact takes place on Thursday February 1st.) Assuming RoboHelp Server6 provides the insight into the online help user experience it claims, its value to techdoc departments striving for more "upstream impact" in their organization could be quite significant.

I had the pleasure of moderating the Content Globalization Workflows session at last week's Gilbane Boston conference. Although we were the last session on the last day, the room was filled with interactive participants with very specific issues and questions. The underlying theme? The act of translation is not the "stress-buster" for globalization projects. It's the process. Managing it, understanding it, aligning it, integrating it -- you name it. Globalization has process-centric red flags from the get-go.

The good news is that globalization as a recognized enterprise business practice continues to gain traction. In fact, our audience cited "global, simultaneous product shipments" as one of the most distinct and well-understood business drivers at the executive and cross-departmental levels. Even better, there are achievable, significant cost savings to be had. The description of a first-year, $2.4 million savings realized by GE Healthcare was impressive, to say the least. Many thanks to Jeanette Eichholz, a Leader in the Global Ultrasound User Documentation group, for sharing her story.

The Gilbane Group is working to keep the subject of globalization in the spotlight as a key issue for 2007 to help organizations understand that cost savings is actually only the cusp of the benefits. Rapid market reach, consistent brand management, and increased customer satisfaction are equally viable, and more importantly, quantifiable.

To that end, join us for our December 13th webinar, "How Sun Takes Brands and Solutions to the Global Marketplace." Sponsored by Interwoven and SDL International, understanding Sun's success factors will be a valuable learning experience for any organization with globalization on the agenda.

Date: 13th December, 2006
Time: 8:30 Pacific, 11:30 Eastern, 16:30 GMT, 17:30 Central Europe
Duration: 1 hour
Register here.

On August 15, 2006 another Gilbane blogger, Rita Warren, queried whether a marriage between CMS and CRM made sense. “Circa 1996… it was all about one-to-one customer communications. That (broad) vision was apparently too hard to realize back then! Maybe it's possible now.”
Well, circa 2006 it’s still all about one-to-one, but I think we understand what that means a lot better. One-to-one customer communications are not only possible, but they are happening in many small and large businesses. In most cases they are not coming from major CRM implementations ala Siebel – they are coming from composition tools. Many composition tool vendors now refer to themselves as personalization or customer communications management products. If you look at some of the case studies from the composition vendors included in my last entry you will find case studies for communications such as statements, enrollment books, and invoices that tailor messaging, educational content, product content, document format and delivery channel based on customer data or stated preferences.

Okay – so as a CMS professional why should you care about composition tools? Several reasons:

• Personalization is a beast that feeds on content. Lots and lots of content. Many composition experts have never even heard of taxonomy – CMS architects needed!
• Many composition tools have rudimentary content capabilities – but integration with “real” content management tools is necessary to feed the beast – CMS integrators needed!
• High volume composition tools are getting to the point where they can serve printed and electronic transactional channels equally well and are starting to move upstream into driving personalized web content. CMS and composition tools are not on the same path – visionaries needed!

It’s only a matter of time before some of the composition vendors decide that they should be in the CMS business. Personally, I think that trying to tightly couple those capabilities with composition would be a bad idea. Composition tools are complicated enough as it is. CMS vendors who have been trying to deliver the holy grail of print and web content management across document types are still not there yet. I find it hard to believe that a composition solution would leapfrog over the current CMS vendors. I suppose this is one instance where it would be nice to be proved wrong.

Meanwhile, an easier path to integrating current CMS technology for managing web and print content with leading high-volume composition tools would be welcome. Document Sciences has worked with Documentum and a few others. GMC Software has partnered with Interwoven a couple of times and Exstream and Metavante have both partnered with IBM OnDemand. I have also seen a number of Exstream - Vignette combos. Few vendors have broad and established content management partnerships and the market is ripe for this kind of collaboration.

The recent Web 2.0 conference predictably accelerated some prognostication on Web 3.0. I don't think these labels are very interesting in themselves, but I do admit that the conversations about what they might be, if they had a meaningful existence, expose some interesting ideas. Unfortunately, they (both the labels and the conversations) also tend to generate a lot of over-excitement and unrealistic expectations, both in terms of financial investment and doomed IT strategies. Dan Farber does his usual great job of collecting some of the thoughts on the recent discussion in "Web 2.0 isn’t dead, but Web 3.0 is bubbling up".

One of the articles Dan links to is a New York Times article by John Markoff, where John basically equates Web 3.0 with the Semantic Web. Maybe that's his way of saying very subtly that there will never be a Web 3.0? No, he is more optimistic. Dan also links to Nick Carr's post welcoming Web 3.0, but even Carr is gentler that he should be.

But here's the basic problem with the Semantic Web - it involves semantics. Semantics are not static, language is not static, science is not static. Even more, rules are not static either, but at least in some cases, syntax, and logical systems have longer shelf lives.

Now, you can force a set of semantics to be static and enforce their use - you can invent little worlds and knowledge domains where you control everything, but there will always be competition. That's how humans work, and that is how science works as far as we can tell. Humans will break both rules and meanings. And although the Semantic Web is about computers as much (or more) than about humans, the more human-like we make computers, the more they will break rules and change meanings and invent their own little worlds.

This is not to say that the goal of a Semantic Web hasn't and won't generate some good ideas and useful applications and technologies - RDF itself is pretty neat. Vision is a good thing, but vision and near-term reality require different behavior and belief systems.

I bet that question made a lot of you cringe and start down a guilt spiral of rationalizations about why your web site isn’t really quite what you wish it was. If you have a bad web site, it’s because your organization is producing a bad web site. And no one who is visiting your site cares why. They don’t care about the bickering between marketing and IT over web site control. They don’t care about the 18-month argument about who gets a link on the homepage, or about the 30 years of history which makes it “impossible” for all the various programs and offices in your organization to cooperate in order to create the integrated web presence that your site visitors long for. They don’t care. But, everyday they are clicking away on your site, frustrated, trying to do business with your organization and trying to get information from your organization. And your organization continues to dither. By rationalizing low quality, you are prioritizing your organization’s bad habits over your customer’s and constituent’s needs.

For a business or an organization with a clearly articulated mission, the intent and purpose of its web site(s) should be obvious—expressed most clearly as a high quality web product. The mission should also be front and center for those producing the organization’s web site(s)- expressed as a coherent set of strategic policies and tactical standards for web site product development. But, we all know this is seldom the case. Web site quality is frequently at the mercy of some set of ill-thought-out, status quo web production processes and a lack of strategic oversight by senior management. All this for what is most likely the first point of contact for individuals interacting with your organization.

Industry colleague, consultant, and Content Management Bible author Bob Boiko is teaching an intensive two-day workshop, "Taming the Content Beast: Content Strategy and Modeling for IT Professionals" in Washington DC September 18th and 19th. Bob is an incredible presenter and will keep you engaged while you're learning. More info.

As a former glue person, I spent numerous hours trading acronyms and definitions with IT analysts on the subject of data and process modeling in the content versus data worlds. Circa 1999, my friend Bob Boeri and I even went so far as to relate logical data models and data dictionaries to DTD structures, using Near and Far Designer as analogous to the more entrenched data modeling tools.

Our goal was to create "common ground" between IT's deep but solely data-centric view of business applications and the needs of various business units whose focus was decidedly document-centric. Once our "data is content and content is data" analogy was mantra, we had an easier time with subsequent process modeling discussions; i.e. "what we want our content to do with your data" and vica versa. (Reminiscent of those "how did your chocolate get into my peanut butter commercials")

In the ECM and BPM intersection, those discussions are once again becoming commonplace as more and more complex business processes require hybrid combinations of unstructured content, structured XML content and traditional data from back-end systems. Hence, information analysts that work with IT and business units must define a common knowledge base of process modeling requirements, flows, and techniques.

More than simple workflow (a.k.a "create, edit, approve, publish"), process models for functions such as compliance, claims processing, and contract management need to combine data-centric techniques with the content-centric, human-driven interactions these functions require. In fact, just as data sources are now hybrids, so too are the processes that require, manipulate, and share them. The BPM suite market is increasingly adding simple document management functionality at the business monitoring level to account for content-centric requirements.

More interesting is the market's approach to workflow, which still appears either data-centric or document/content-centric in terms of standards modeling languages. In fact, a BPM suite vendor’s architecture choice for process modeling and execution is also a clue to their data versus content strengths via support for XPDL (XML Process Definition Language) versus BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). Highlights:

XPDL – initiated and managed by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), XPDL is decidedly human workflow-centric and more oriented for document-driven processes. No surprise that workflow, document management pure-plays, and some ECM players with BPM modules have strong XPDL modeling and processing engines. More info at WfMC.

One of the more significant questions at the ECM and BPM intersection is, "Where is the best of both worlds in terms of process modeling for complex workflow that is a human and data-driven hybrid?"

We've been monitoring acitivity in the BPM market with an eye on the connections between ECM and BPM technologies as they apply to content-centric business processes and applications. The evolution of BPM suites has been particularly interesting and in many ways, analogous to the patterns that formed the current ECM suite market. Technology convergence, vendor consolidation, a full slate of interchangeable acronyms, and rising levels of market confusion surrounding the definitive list of suite-level components are all evident as the BPM suite market continues to define itself. Sound familiar?

BPM suites are clearly an emerging market. Broadly defined as the ability to model, execute, simulate, and optimize business processes, the market consolidates technologies such as analytical modeling, rules design and execution, workflow, data aggregation, and process optimization into a single platform vision. Numerous pure-play BPM providers within each technology segment are evolving toward “the vision” in different ways.

I am positive that this is not a "never the twain shall meet" situation when it comes to content strategies and ECM technologies. Process and content are siblings; it is only a matter of time before many of the isolated technologies that support both will merge in a more tangible manner than simple workflow. This kind of ECM and BPM intersection is more complex than the traditional integration of the BPM market's straight-through processing (STP) expertise with data-centric, transactional content. Rather, it will be an emerging focus on what we view as process content, or content that travels through a complex, human-driven, interactive, and iterative lifecycle.

EMC's acquisition of ProActivity is a tangible indicator of this evolving intersection, demonstrated as well by BEA's acquisition of Fuego, FileNet's ongoing investment in its BPM components, the progression of DM/BPM players such as Global 360 and Hyland Software, and Lombardi Software's integration with Microsoft Office. Stay tuned for more as the market heads toward cohesive vertical and horizontal solutions -- critical for both traction and helping the user community understand implementation value. We'll keep you posted.